


Let Go or be Dragged

by ecouterbien



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/F, Flashbacks, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 07:51:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3684108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecouterbien/pseuds/ecouterbien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I was wrong, Watson. I didn't forget the voice, I couldn't. De Merville didn't hurt me. He did.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Go or be Dragged

**Author's Note:**

> Post events of episode 3x11, "The Illustrious Client"

Joan knows what to do in these situations, the textbook response, but she can’t bring herself to do it. It’s different when it’s someone you know, when it’s family. That’s what she’d said to Del Gruner, she’s like family. He didn't know who she was talking about, she had been discreet, but she still feels completely exposed. Joan knows better than anyone the dangers of knowing too much.

“Kitty, turn it off.” 

Kitty is still trembling, staring fixedly into the middle distance. She can’t hear Joan.

“KITTY.” She turns and stares at Joan, startled. “Turn it off. I’ll make some tea.”

They sit opposite each other for a long time, Kitty hunched over her mug and clutching it like it’s the last lifeline left in the world. Joan knows what to do now, knows not to talk until Kitty does, even if it takes all night.

“How did Sherlock know to send me to you?” She asks hesitantly. “He was very insistent. I mean, he’s supportive in his way, but he’s not a people person, he can’t just read me and magically know that you’re the best person for me to talk to, he’s all about evidence and solutions to problems.”

Joan’s fingers clench and unclench around her mug of tea. She remembers the creeping numbness, her senses rapidly giving way until the claustrophobia of it was too much and she passed out.

“Watson, why does he think you’re the solution to my problem?”

“I was taken.” Joan feels her whole body unravel slowly. “I was involved with Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, and he was involved with the French Mafia but I didn't know that at the time.” She stares into her tea, a translucent gold. She can see right to the bottom of the cup. “I tailed them. I thought I was doing him a favour.”

She knew that by helping Marchef’s cousin she could ingratiate herself to her captors, give herself a better chance of survival. She thought she would flinch but she didn't, maybe because it was a box cutter and not a scalpel? The blood, all that blood. Afterwards she’d scrubbed her hands with vodka until they were red. She stank of it for hours. 

It wasn't like she’d done much, she’d told herself. She couldn't find the bullet, only clean the wound and stem the bleeding. So why was she shaking long after Marchef had tied her up again? She’d tried pushing the feeling back down, but when she closed her eyes all she could see was Gerald Castoro’s body. The blood, all that blood. She couldn't do it any more, her whole body was aching. She’d remembered what her father had said to her in one of his rare lucid moments, let go or be dragged. When she closed her eyes a sea of red washed over her. Tears began to stream down her cheeks.

“How do you do it, Watson? How do you not let it consume you? I can’t see clearly, I can’t think…” her body judders with a sob, “I attacked De Merville’s sister last night because I was so convinced it was him that did this to me…” 

“At first I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't recognise who I’d become and so I just went through the motions.”

“And everyone just thought you were strong?”

“Mhmm. Sometimes when you get too used to being something, you forget how to be anything else. And,” she sighs, “I felt as though if I said one word everything would fall apart, so I didn't. I think Sherlock felt it, too. In the end it didn't matter, everything fell apart anyway.”

“That’s when you decided to leave?”

“No. Sherlock jumped the gun on that one. In any case I’d decided long before the kidnapping that we both needed more space for ourselves. I’d been so consumed with cases and…him that I was starting to forget who I was.”

“He says that,” Kitty pauses as Joan catches her eye, “I mean he thought your room was unusually empty. I don’t know what he knows about former doctors and décor, he thought it might have been a Zen thing.”

Joan smiles at the thought of Sherlock still appraising her character from afar, after all, a room that remains empty for so long is a glaring declaration of character. Yes, that’s how he’d phrase it.

“It’s a thing that I do,” she pauses. She’s never said this out loud to anyone even though it must be obvious to both Kitty and Sherlock. “It’s easier to move on when there’s nothing to remind you of the past.”


End file.
